One of the things you have to use to get a good PCR is at least 750 nanograms of DNA. They have no idea how much DNA was there. And they quantified 3-9 out of 186. Sure they found a band of clovens (sp?), but clovens are in every single cell, so again, you’re making an unfair comparison of what you’re saying you see. And then you amplify it for less cycles than what would really push the envelope.

Click to expand...

should be:

One of the things you have to use to get a good PCR is at least 750 nanograms of DNA. They have no idea how much DNA was there. And they quantified 3-9 out of 186. Sure they found a band of globin, but globin is in every single cell, so again, you’re making an unfair comparison of what you’re saying you see. And then you amplify it for less cycles than what would really push the envelope.

Hi...sorry that was just from 45 minutes to the end, ie, I only had about 10 mins to do! I think all sections are now covered and we must be near to getting the whole thing.

Re this last 10 min passage it is very difficult to hear in places and I have highlighted where it needs a little help. My son had his lap top held to my ear and we both had problems getting it! I found out yesterday that the whole transcribing thing is a little more difficult when you can only remember about 2 words at any one time with this thing!

Anyway, here goes:

Judy: Or associated ??? Why would they change that thing? By the way I cant say that, and I couldn’t spell it either, so those patients, they actually go on steroids to dampen the inflammation, the immune response and they are fine for decades but you know in the Caribbean and in Japan it was a health problem so maybe we only have a health problem in the distribution is ..not…but we do have at least 10 million Americans and maybe a majority of the CFS population here in American that we have a lot of work to just to treat and that will be the focus of the Institute in the coming years. Certainly we will treat everybody else but obviously we don’t see everybody else…Dan was the funniest, he was like “Well, Judy do you have to take care of everybody else?” and I said “of course, they haven’t gotten anybody else!” ..you know..so it is an interesting and an exciting time for sure.

Do you want me to… oh John

Question: I just wanted to say, you know, it is really exciting to hear you say we need to do this, we are going to do this ??? (inaudible) the study here the virus years the virus you are studying, is a ???? virus and I think it is really important to note everyone that for you to do what you are talking about, other researches to do it the patients need to get behind funding the research in a way we have never done before or it is not going to happen.

Judy: But have your government funded any research? HIV incidence in this country is about 800,000 people, I just….

Audience Comment: Well it needs the most brain dead CFS patient in the Federal Government

Judy: In the early days they took condoms with red stuff in that we didn’t know weren’t blood and threw them I think. I probably shouldn’t say this but with a prostate cancer virus I thought well those men can’t possibly ignore this now (…laughter)…I never said that publicly!

Ok, so, yeah,

Question: Would you talk about what is coming up in the next years, what are the next steps, where are the possibilities with your treatments, with the replication studies..?

Judy: Yeah, so all of those people I showed you internationally are working to replicate the study as is the Blood Working Group, we have been working intensely with them we have another conference call on Monday, these things are happening, we will put probably around 20% effort in our lab into that study. We are very serious about transmission studies in our lab and in the Institute and we have one starting where we simply comparing infected people, people who we isolated from the blood with…, and just taking DNA in their saliva for example, to see if there is any evidence in saliva or of that kind of transmission just again, that is just because of anecdotal, you know, stories, where people say, well, you know a bunch of kids on the playground with a water fountain or at school or I don’t know..the anecdotes are, but just thinking of ruling those kinds of things out is the kind of study we are doing. We are also actively looking at the incidence in other Neuro Immune Diseases so we are looking at that study I told you about, we are looking at cancer and CFS, we are looking at Fibromyalgia, Atypical MS. We have a study going with Vanderville?? in POTS which is the Tachycardia ‘Postural Tachycardia’ because of the overlapping symptoms. So he is simply just sending me a bunch of samples both serra and DNA and we are just going to take a look to see if we see it there. Autism, we do have some families with some autism and there are some immune defects characterised by June VanDeWater at the Mind Institute in Sacramento and she sees some NK cell dysfunction, some inflammation, some of the things I told you about there, so in that group of autism we are looking at to see if maybe there is not an underlying pathogen or exploratory infection. Those are just the priorities in the coming year. The NCI, the National Cancer Institute has already put a $1m into the development of the reagents and the assays, so very soon the best of tests and all the reagents that can be distributed so that the AIDS reference programme, there is an AIDS Reagent Reference Programme if you just google on that you will find them, has agreed to set up an XMRV and send reagents around the world we have spent considerable time and resources just shipping department..???????unaudible comment from the audience We are continuing the studies of the immune system so I had an entire programme set up from the beginning where we are looking at the genetics with Mary Carrington. We are looking at the type 1 ????? continuous studies….just because that single new type variant we didn’t find had any correlation with XMRV infection still doesn’t mean that there isn’t something wrong with the RNA cells and that may be a therapeutic target and so ginny?? is actively studying research the type 1 interferon pathway and RNA cell. Isabel Barao-Silvestre is a faculty member that has just joined us, she is a professor and she is at UNR as well and she is an expert in natural killer cells and killer cell function so she is doing a lot of the inane immune response and understanding how XMRV infection in NK cell enzymes might contribute to disease, as a hypothesise, we don’t know how yet…..so those are the internal programmes going on. To cover my background I am actively perusing all the drug development efforts in our laboratory by working with at least three companies right now, to look at that.

Audience Member: What, that is all we have time for.

Judy: So would you like me to address some of the ones…

Audience Member: No actually..

Judy: ‘we’re good’

Audience Comment: Yes we’re good, Judy has answered many many questions from all over the world and we are going to make that available on line for everyone.

Judy: Yes sometime in the next week, that will be fun, yes so we have got a lot of questions so those of you in the audience and around the world if you email a question we try to answer every one of them and so we will post them up at the Prohealth website we will probably post them and put them on our website so that you can get some direct answers, there were some more specific questions there. The only one that came up which I think is good to address is a lot of people wanted to know is if XMRV somehow piggybacked on EVB or other pathogens to get into an affected individual and I didn’t know what that term meant, it is not a scientific term, but if it meant that you couldn’t get XMRV unless you had have come in with another infection, there is just no evidence of that in any retro virus so, yes people think that people got infected with HHV8 and HIV at the same time because of the Africa thing, you can get infected with 2 pathogens at once but there is no need for any of them to piggyback you don’t need another pathogen in order to be infected with XMRV or any other retro virus. So I just wanted to clear that up because that came up probably at least 4 or 5 times. And the only other question if you have written them all down and I am happy to answer them and any direct questions ???? it is judym@wpinstitute.org.. Some people are like I emailed you yesterday and you didn’t answer and I said “oh I slept yesterday “ because.. If I don’t answer you within a week then write me back cause sometimes I miss it and sometimes our emails are so full these days that they are throwing things into spam and sometimes it is the bills and I have to pay them, so there are things that are getting sent so if you haven’t heard from me you will usually hear from me within a week because I really do try to answer essentially every one that I get which is probably foolish but I like to actually, I like to work with the patients.

Audience Comment: That was wonderfull thank you., that was

Judy: ???? she just happened to email and me…your’re welcome, thank you …clapping

Sorry it is not great and I didn't catch it all. Thank you from me for everyone's input on this.

Just a note to anyone transcribing the 2nd video (Q&A). Both the audio and video seem to be much better quality in the downloaded video (m4v format). You can hear almost all the questions, and you can even lip read some of the questioners.

One of the things you have to use to get a good PCR is at least 750 nanograms of DNA. They have no idea how much DNA was there. And they quantified 3-9 out of 186. Sure they found a band of globin, but globin is in every single cell, so again, youre making an unfair comparison of what youre saying you see. And then you amplify it for less cycles than what would really push the envelope.

Click to expand...

Thank you again, garcia!!! You're just terrifc! I appreciate it so much!

Judy: Yeah, and nobodys ever looked. Its certainly something they could look at and correlate. I cant think of a reason why. You might presume youd have less if youre using it up for another purpose.

Question: inaudible

Section 7

Judy: We do have a little bit of data on that because we have two children in a study who have a genetic disease of cholesterol. Its called Niemann Pick Disease. Its also known as Childhood Alzheimers. (15:11)

And these kids, you know its a cholesterol metabolism disease where you actually have it in your brain, and youll actually die of it because if you get too much cholesterol it messes up your brain and everything.

And those kids have been treated by James Hildreth at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, at a small college, I cant remember the name right now. And hes using cyclodextran and some of the cholesterol drugs. Hes actually an HIV drug developer, and the kids are showing some improvement when he modulates that pathway and stops the virus from entering or exiting the cell, so we dont know anything about XMRV. We just know what other [inaudible] so inaudible set thinking theres some opportunities there.

Q: inaudible

Judy: Yeah, were working with him as well. Thats why inaudible the United States. Were providing reagents and whatever intellectual knowledge we have and whatever physical ability and instruments we have, too, so its a collaborative effort as well.

Q: inaudible forthcoming therapies are established what are plan on doing inaudbile Are they immunomodulating therapies?

Judy - Some, as you know a lot of, some of what I showed you here that turn on/off switch suggests non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. So non-steroidal anti-inflammatories could well help. Things that (?) balance cortisol. Maybe (?) These are just (?) because you know inflammation turns on the virus, and I dont know much about hormone therapies and how lowering hormone levels might help, but do know anecdotally that a lot of women in a particular time in their cycle get much (?) sicker and cant get over it, so you might think of a real low I do know in the laboratory that progesterone really upregulates the virus, so if you have a birth control Again I dont really know anything about this. Im not a physician. You might think about keeping the levels balanced and avoiding the fluctuation.

So certainly supplements can help a lot. Retroviruses cause a lot of oxidative stress. So things like N-acetylcysteine and glutathione, the detox type People do take supplements. I know that a lot of people have had success with immune modulators, just helping their disease because they know about them. I caution against taking too much or taking a bunch of things. Try to learn as much as you can, because supplements arent controlled by regulatory agencies, and theyre If youre not using high quality you could actually be putting poisons in you, and since we dont know much about the virus you could modulate the wrong way.

But things that upregulate NK cell function, and there are no known compounds out there that do that, that are marketed in our (?) , so that could help you, so Im really not We dont know a lot about it, but thats how people are actually starting to help themselves.

The other thing is to stay out of stressful situations. Its hard to do. In fact, weve seen a lot of people get worse just with the stress of this discovery, which is sad. Just the stress of the discovery has people freaking out. Theyre The psychological Thats why I want you to call me. Because we dont want, No, no! I have a retrovirus! We want to talk to you because its serious and you can have untold

Most people say, Well (?) congratulating people when they come up positive, which is really Then they get really scared, because they dont know anything about it. And were here as much as we can to help, but we dont know anything about that retrovirus. All we can say is that the same thing Ive been saying today. If you know I hope you will go home and say, Its not a mouse retrovirus. Retroviruses are not ubiquitous, and theyre not benign. I have to think about those facts. So its wide open.

The drug companies One thing, when you do get tested, and we know youre positive, a confirmed positive Well get you into the earliest clinical trials. And theyll have things pretty soon because all they have to do And its major Pharma All they have to do, and Ive even left (?) The reagents and the cell lines Weve made a lot of cell lines for people (?) virus. And so weve given them those cell lines, and all they have to do is take something off the shelf that rationally might inhibit, say, an integrase gene or another gene thats conserved across the three retroviruses and know that they can see the efficiency, the efficacy and knockdown levels of the virus in the lab to levels, when known blood levels of the drug can achieve, and they can submit and do the paperwork for a clinical trial. And its already known to be safe because its already passed Phase 1, or safety trials, in humans. So we will look at those first. And there are a number of companies who, as I say, they are high quality companies, and they are They are more than interested. They are doing it now, and have been since October.

Question: inaudible

Judy: We very much expect that some of the breast cancer incidence We hypothesize that inflammatory breast cancer a lot like what we saw with the inflammatory prostate But yes, it is a very real hypothesis because the incidence of breast cancer in young women that youve never even seen before, is rising at levels that suggest something environmental, and not necessarily genetic. (?) cancer in my family and you see young women that way, so it certainly is something that were looking at (?) I would say we but its everybody but me, usually Its the National Cancer Institute. Were also looking at lymphoma, because CLL (chronic lymphocytic lymphoma) is a lymphoma that (?) and its also been going up and up, and it suggests (?) some kind of an infectious nature, so we are looking at a number of lymphomas, with a group in New York, a group in Florida, and the Nevada Cancer Institute. I dont have a breast cancer study set uptheres actually

Question: inaudible anti-viral

Judy: Anti-retroviral.

Question: inaudible vaccine

Judy: Yeah, a vaccine is a real opportunity, and we know that they still dont have an HIV vaccine yet, thats efficacious, but HIV is a complex retrovirus. So when youre thinking about the reason why you have to take a flu vaccine every year, its because the virus changes. Well, and HIV virus in a person in a week will change too much They (?..?) species.

One of the really interesting things about these studies is we only isolate one thing out of these people. When we do the sequencing, its clean. We dont isolate (?) species. We dont have the virus have these changes here in one week or one year We have patient samples from dozens of years. We isolated XMRV from a 1984 plasma sample from a patient. So we got it in 2008 and we got it in 1984, which again suggests that the virus has been around at least 25 years. But its not plausible, so yes indeed, it could play a role in Did I answer the rest of that question?

Question: inaudible positive expression

Judy: Well, there are a couple of things for that. First of all, were not certain of anything. As I said, its a hypothesis. Its because of what I know about HIV, and HHV-8, so these herpes viruses, where its the underlying immune deficiency. The other viruses arent retroviruses (?) pathogens too, the bacteria, and they dont live in your immune systems forever and replicate ? Theyre across the board, so everybodys infected. Probably 90% of this room have an EBV infection. But very few people express EBV, have chronic active EBV. That suggests that your immune system has something wrong with it. You need (?) certainly go either way, but retroviruses dont do that. And people that

The CFS world has looked at many of those pathogens, so heres chronic Lyme and heres EBV and heres Its never one place, so (?) something that unifies all of them. So its certainly a testable hypothesis, and thats one of those things that will happen. If you get an anti-retroviral and a chronic EBV goes away, and a lot of the symptoms go away Im not saying that the EVB doesnt cause a lot of those symptoms Thats what makes it so hard to figure out the disease But if theres an underlying immune deficiency thats createdthats not simply depressionbut is getting worse every year, could be an explanation. So were happy that we can test that Because we do have different populations where we can see what the role of the co-infection is. Weve never looked

Were looking with various groups at big cohorts of chronic Lyme and big cohorts of EBV, Q Fever Things like that have been associated with Jonathan Kerr, in fact, hes working (?) to see if it makes sense, that you need to accommodate (?) or you need one or the other, but In the general population the incidence of XMRV is something between 2 and 4% right now, so whereas its 90% (?) viruses, and most of us are exposed to these other pathogens, so I dont have an answer, but again, this gives us a testable hypothesis. All the way in the back.

Judy: Well, again, we dont know Its my thought that Its a hypothesis that the Lyme Disease, especially in Lyme Disease, where it goes away and its almost cured and you only see some proteins that dont necessarily and it suggests that youre almost cured with the antibiotic but you have to keep the antibiotic there because at a low level that your immune system cant clear, and maybe it cant clear it because youve created an immune deficiency with the retroviral infection. And weve never looked at a Lyme cohort yet. Again, theyre setting that up, but we dont know the connection But the hypothesis is, if we can treat the retrovirus, then the chronic Lyme will go away. And youll treat with both.

Q: inaudible But he was untreated until about 7, and was bitten in Europe, and he had the rash on his legs and no one believed me.

Judy: Well, we can still clear the Lyme. For instance, in the AIDS population you treat the pneumocystis pneumonia You treat it with the appropriate antibiotics because you dont want the co-infections to kill him, and do the anti-retrovirals too. Theres no reason For instance, one of the questions that I got online was, Im taking antivirals. Do I need to stop in order to get tested. The answer is no. Because antivirals dont target retroviruses. Retroviruses are very distinct viruses, so no, you dont need to stop. Well still find the virus.

Q: inaudible That was 10 years ago. Youre saying you would still treat for Lyme.

Judy: Yeah, well you probably should be at this point. Treated for both the Lyme and once we have a treatment, for the retrovirus.

Q: inaudible

Judy: The possibility is that its transmitted sexually, but weve never actually shown human-to-human transmission. Inaudible when the other got sick. I dont actually have an answer for that other than that I know that it might well be more in couples than we think, because maybe theres a milder form of symptoms, so maybe this persons a carrier. Theres still a lot about why prostate cancer and why CFS What is the hormone component to that that so turns on the virus. They may be carriers and not know it, and certainly theres a lot to study there to understand the gender differences in these diseases.

Hi, I just went through it all and tried to fill in what I could of the gaps... sorry if I've duplicated any work here...

Question: Yeah cos I'm wondering... I’ve met a lot of other CFS patients like me who have high cholesterol [inaudible] correlation [inaudible]

Judy: Yeah, and nobody’s ever looked. It’s certainly something they could look at and correlate. I can’t think of a reason why. You might presume you’d have less if you’re using it up for another purpose.

Question: inaudible

Section 7

Judy: We do have a little bit of data on that because we have two children in a study who have a genetic disease of cholesterol. It’s called Niemann Pick Disease. It’s also known as Childhood Alzheimers. (15:11)

And these kids, you know it’s a cholesterol metabolism disease where you actually have it in your brain, and you’ll actually die of it because if you get too much cholesterol it messes up your brain and everything.

And those kids have been treated by James Hildreth at Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee, at a small college, I can’t remember right now. And he’s using cyclodextran and some of the cholesterol drugs. He’s actually an HIV drug developer, and the kids are showing some improvement when he modulates that pathway and stops the virus from entering or exiting the cell, so we don’t know anything about XMRV. We just know what other viruses do so he is having some success [inaudible] thinking there’s some opportunities there.

Q: inaudible

Judy: Yeah, we’re working with him as well. That’s why I didn't list all the collaborators at the United States. We’re providing reagents and whatever intellectual knowledge we have and whatever physical abilities and instruments we have to these collaborative efforts as well.

Q: Until forthcoming therapies are established for those who have XMRV what are people doing to protect them inaudbile Are they taking immunomodulating therapies or whatever?

Judy - Some, as you know a lot of, some of what I showed you here that turn on/off switch suggests non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. So non-steroidal anti-inflammatories could well help. Things that will balance cortisol. Maybe... these are just thought processes... because you know inflammation turns on the virus, and I don’t know much about hormone therapies and how lowering hormone levels might help, but do know anecdotally that a lot of women in a particular time in their cycle get much much sicker and can’t get over it, so you might think of a real low… I do know in the laboratory progesterone really upregulates the virus, so if you have a birth control pill… and again I don’t really know anything about this... I’m not a physician... you might think about keeping the levels balanced and avoiding the fluctuation.

So certainly supplements can help a lot. Retroviruses cause a lot of oxidative stress. So things like N-acetylcysteine and glutathione, the detox type… People do take supplements. I know that a lot of people have had success with immune modulators, just helping their disease, or supplements, because they know about them. I caution against taking too much or taking a bunch of things.

Try to learn as much as you can, because supplements aren’t controlled by regulatory agencies, and therefore if you’re not using high quality you could actually be putting poisons in you, and since we don’t know much about the virus you could modulate the wrong way.

But things that upregulate NK cell function, and there are known compounds out there that do that, that are marketed in our state, so that could help you, so… I’m really not… We don’t know a lot about it, but that’s how people are actually starting to help themselves.

The other thing is to stay out of stressful situations. It’s hard to do. In fact, we’ve seen a lot of people get worse just with the stress of this discovery, which is sad. Just the stress of the discovery has people freaking out. They’re… The psychological… That’s why I want you to call me. Because we don’t want, “No, no! I have a retrovirus!” We want to talk to you because it’s serious and you can have untold…

Most people say, “Well…” (?) congratulating people when they come up positive, which is really strange… [laughter] Then they get really scared, because they don’t know anything about it. And we’re here as much as we can to help, but we don’t know anything about that retrovirus. All we can say is that… the same thing I’ve been saying today. If you know… I hope you will go home and say, “It’s not a mouse retrovirus. Retroviruses are not ubiquitous, and they’re not benign. So I have to think about those facts.” So it’s wide open.

The drug companies… the one thing, if you do get tested, and we know you’re positive, a confirmed positive -- we’ll get you into the earliest clinical trials. And they’ll have things pretty soon because all they have to do -- and it’s major Pharma -- all they have to do, and I've given them the reagents and the cell lines -- we’ve made several cell lines to make a lot of virus. And so we’ve given them those cell lines, and all they have to do is take something off the shelf that rationally might inhibit a particular, say, an integrase gene or another gene that’s conserved across the three retroviruses and know that they can see the efficiency, the efficacy and knockdown levels of the virus in the lab to levels, which they're the known blood levels of the drug can achieve, and they can submit and do the paperwork for a clinical trial. And it’s already known to be safe because it’s already passed Phase 1, or safety trials, in humans. So we will look at those first. And there are a number of companies who, as I say, they are high quality companies, and they are… they are more than interested. They are doing it now, and have been doing it since October.

Question: inaudible

Judy: We very much expect that some of the breast cancer incidence -- we hypothesize that inflammatory breast cancer a lot like what we saw with the inflammatory prostate -- but yes, it is a very real hypothesis because the incidence of breast cancer in young women that you’ve never used to see before, is rising at levels that suggest something environmental, and not necessarily genetic. We have had cancer in my family and you see young women that way, so it certainly is something that we’re looking at (?) … I would say we but it’s everybody but me, usually… it’s the National Cancer Institute. We’re also looking at lymphoma, because CLL (chronic lymphocytic lymphoma) is a lymphoma that [is a mesalymphoma?] and it’s also been going up and up, and it suggests to us some kind of role of an infectious nature, so we are looking at a number of lymphomas, with a group in New York, a group in Florida, and the Nevada Cancer Institute. I don’t have a breast cancer study set up… there’s actually…

Question: inaudible anti-viral

Judy: Anti-retroviral.

Question: inaudible vaccine theat could...

Judy: Yeah, a vaccine is a real opportunity, and we know that they still don’t have an HIV vaccine yet, that’s efficacious, but HIV is a complex retrovirus. So when you’re thinking about the reason why you have to take a flu vaccine every year, it’s because the virus changes. Well, an HIV virus in a person in a week will change too much… even... they call them quasi-species.

One of the really interesting things about these studies is we only isolate one thing out of these people. When we do the sequencing, it’s clean. We don’t isolate quasi-species. We don’t have the virus have these changes here in one week or one year… we have patient samples across dozens of years. We isolated XMRV from a 1984 plasma sample from a patient. So we got it in 2008 and we got it in 1984, which again suggests that the virus has been around at least 25 years and it might have a role in disease. But it’s not plausible, so yes indeed, it could play a role in other things… Did I answer the rest of that question?

Question: People with CFS have shown [inaudible] a lot of other studies. How are you certain that XMRV is causing immunosupression given that there are 8 other viruses [inaudible] positive expression [inaudible]

Judy: Well, there are a couple of things for that. First of all, we’re not certain of anything. As I said, it’s a hypothesis. It’s because of what I know about HIV, and HHV-8, so these herpes viruses, where it’s the underlying immune deficiency. The other viruses aren’t retroviruses, the other pathogens too, the bacteria, and they don’t live in your immune systems forever and replicate, have reservoirs. They’re across the board, so everybody’s infected. Probably 90% of this room has an EBV infection. But very few people express EBV, have chronic active EBV. That suggests that your immune system has something wrong with it. You could certainly go either way, but retroviruses don’t do that. And people that…

The CFS world has looked at any of those pathogens, so here’s chronic Lyme and here’s EBV and here’s… It’s never one place, something that unifies all of them. So it’s certainly a testable hypothesis, and that’s one of those things that will just happen. If you get an anti-retroviral and a chronic EBV goes away, and a lot of the symptoms go away… I’m not saying that the EBV doesn’t cause a lot of those symptoms. That’s what makes it so hard to figure out the disease. But if there’s an underlying immune deficiency that’s created… that’s not simply depression… but is getting worse every year, could be an explanation. So we’re happy that we can test that, because we do have different populations where we can see what the role of the co-infection is. We’ve never looked…

We’re looking with various groups at big cohorts of chronic Lyme and big cohorts of chronic EBV, Q Fever… things like that have been associated with… Jonathan Kerr, in fact, he’s working actively with us to see if it makes sense, that you need the combination or or you need one or the other, but… in the general population the incidence of XMRV is something between 2 and 4% right now, so… whereas it’s 90% of some of the herpes viruses, and most of us are exposed to these other pathogens, so I certainly don’t have an answer, but again, this gives us a testable hypothesis to look. All the way in the back.

Q: So I’m XMRV positive, okay? I’m also [inaudible]? Told that I have chronic Lyme. Explain the chronic Lyme connection.

Judy: Well, again, we don’t know -- it’s my thought that -- it’s my hypothesis that the Lyme Disease, especially in Lyme Disease, where it goes away and it’s almost cured and you only see some proteins that don’t necessarily; you know; it suggests that you’re almost cure it with the antibiotics but you have to keep the antibiotic there because … at a low level that your immune system can’t clear, and maybe it can’t clear it because you’ve created an immune deficiency with the retroviral infection. And we’ve never looked at a Lyme cohort yet. Again, we’re setting that up, but we don’t know the connection… But the hypothesis is, if we can treat the retrovirus, then the chronic Lyme will go away, is the thought. And you’ll treat with both.

Q: inaudible But he was untreated until about 7, and was bitten in Europe, and no-one understood that there. He had the rash on his legs and no one believed me.

Judy: Well, we can still clear the Lyme. For instance, in the AIDS population you treated the pneumocystis pneumonia… You treat it with the appropriate antibiotics because you don’t want the co-infections to kill him, and then do the anti-retrovirals too. There’s no reason… For instance, one of the questions that I got online was, “Well, I’m taking antivirals. Do I need to stop in order to get tested.” The answer is no. Because antivirals don’t target retroviruses. Retroviruses are very distinct viruses, so no, you don’t need to stop. We’ll still find the virus.

Q: But even 10 years later, and he was never treated. That was 10 years ago. You’re saying you would still treat for Lyme.

Judy: Yeah, well you probably should be at this point. Treated for both the Lyme and once we have a treatment, for the retrovirus.

Q: [inaudible] if XMRV is transmitted sexually, how come we're not seeing it in [inaudible]

Judy: The possibility is that it’s transmitted sexually, but we’ve never actually shown human-to-human transmission or caught the day when the other got sick. I don’t actually have an answer for that other than that I know that it might well be more in couples than we think, because maybe there’s a milder form of symptoms, so maybe this person’s a carrier. There’s still a lot we don't know about why prostate cancer and why CFS… what is the hormone component to that that so turns on the virus. They may be carriers and not know it, and certainly there’s a lot to study there to understand the gender differences in these diseases.

Q: [inaudible] So if XMRV turns out to be the cause, [inaudible] you could have the virus without having

Hi you amazing transcribers....I just went looking for the whole mikovits prohealth talk and on the home page/XMRV section/I could find Part I, Part II&III and Part V&VI. But I couldn't find Part IV/V. I want to make sure not to miss anything! Do you know if the final text on the XMRV home page is mislabeled? Or are those two parts missing for some reason? ~Fern